“Immediately Start Turning”: What Small Brands Need To Know To Survive And Thrive At Big Retailers

Securing a major retail partnership can put a brand on the map, but moving products off the shelf requires targeted strategies to spend capital the right away. To better understand those strategies and what it takes to succeed at a major retailer, Beauty Independent gathered three brand leaders—Stu Jolley, founder of Stories & Ink, Eric Delapenha, founder and CEO of The Hair Lab by Strands, Strands and The Body Lab, and Julia Tissot-Gaillard, CEO of Altesse Studio—for a recent episode of the In Conversation webinar series. During the episode, they discussed their brands’ retail presences, the realities of doing business with stores and investments they’ve made to stand out on shelf.

Stories & Ink

What It Is: A British tattoo aftercare brand that first launched in 2017 as Electric Ink.

Retail Footprint: 800 Target stores and 600 Superdrug stores

Funding History: Raised $1.6 million in July, bringing its total funding to date to $2.6 million.

As an early mover in the growing tattoo aftercare category, Electric Ink turned to British pharmacy chain Superdrug to test its concept with customers. “It wasn’t a growth-at-all-costs thing. We were prepared to learn through putting this product range into a retailer like Superdrug, but we were also prepared to remove it should DTC suddenly take off,” explained Jolley. “We needed some initial scale and some initial awareness to test the idea, and Superdrug was a really good case study for us to do that.”

After pivoting Electric Ink to direct-to-consumer distribution, it’s back at Superdrug in its Stories & Ink incarnation. It’s at Target, too. In March this year, Stories & Ink landed in 800 Target stores as the mass-market retailer’s first tattoo care brand. The 800 doors is a more limited rollout than the 1,800-door rollout Target offered, but the brand was cognizant that it had to be highly tactical with its marketing spend as it was getting the partnership underway.

Jolley adds that Stories & Ink’s most recent fundraise finished following its Target launch. He underscored velocity rather than profitability is the brand’s first-year objective at the chain. 

“We’ve invested in classic trade marketing spend that the retailer wants you to sign up to, but you can build brands on TikTok, and you can build them in really, really scrappy ways,” said Jolley. “That’s kind of where we’re putting a lot of our attention. We’ve looked at tattoo studios within a five to 10 mile radius of our store distribution where we can do all the education, trial and the interaction with our customer. Our job is to build awareness outside of the store and to build hype. If we’re doing that, the customer will find us at Target.”

Stories & Ink isn’t Jolley’s first experience launching brands at retail. Ten years ago, he founded men’s body wipe brand Wingman before expanding it into every supermarket across the United Kingdom and pharmacy chain Boots. However, the brand’s margins eroded when it pushed into men’s skincare and shower products, and it quickly lost its differentiation on shelf. Jolley eventually shuttered Wingman. 

He previous experience impressed on him the importance of honing in on price, positioning and promotion. “Boots has an always-on promotion, so you’ve got to do your homework on the financials,” he said. “You also have to understand, what if it doesn’t work? Have you got a plan B? Is there a chance to pivot with this retailer? Because sometimes the product can be put in the wrong place on shelf in the wrong category.”

The Hair Lab By Strands

What It Is: A mass-market offshoot of Strands, a direct-to-consumer brand that creates custom haircare products from data collected through at-home testing kits. Launched in August 2022, The Hair Lab by Strands developed shampoos and conditioners for brick-and-mortar retail and includes an online diagnostic tool and customizable add-in treatments to supercharge its products. 

Retail Footprint: 2,500 Walmart stores

Funding History: Raised $5 million to support Walmart launch. Strands previously raised $3.4 million from a pool of angel investors to erect its DTC business in 2020.

Delapenha identified capital and time as crucial factors in succeeding at a huge retailer like Walmart. “We spent almost a year and a half from the initial conversations to when we launched. Don’t make the assumption that they understand what small brands explicitly need to succeed,” he said. “In the beginning, you have to ask a lot of questions and finding the right people within the organization is a challenge.”

Having the right team in place has been essential in fueling The Hair Lab’s momentum at retail. Externally, the brand’s brokers and third-party logistics provider have made overcoming operational challenges at Walmart possible. Internally, Delapenha pointed to The Hair Lab’s CFO, COO and marketing team as key figures. “Once you get to shelf, you’ve got to immediately start turning,” he said. 

Reliant on a high level of consumer education to sell its products, The Hair Lab invested heavily in store displays and messaging to gain traction in the aisles of Walmart. Outside of Walmart, third-party marketing agencies struggled at the outset to create buzz for the brand. As a result, The Hair Lab fashioned a targeted data-focused influencer strategy that zeroed in on follower sentiment and intent to purchase rather than follower size.

“That really allowed us to repeatedly go viral and have a very efficient marketing spend last year where influencer was our biggest channel,” said Delapenha. “We were getting an 8X return on our spend all because we were taking this very scientific and data-driven approach of looking at how their audience feels about the products they’re promoting and if they express intent to purchase those products.”

Altesse Studio

What It Is: Previously known as Fournival Altesse, Altesse Studio is a French hair brush brand and manufacturer with roots reaching back to 1875. It was acquired by the French technology and luxury conglomerate Chargeurs in 2021. The company manufactures hair brushes for its in-house premium brand, Altesse Studio, but also handles private-label brushes for third-party brands and retailers with prices spanning mass to luxury. 

Retail Footprint: Altesse Studio is distributed in hundreds of accounts, including French pharmacies and department stores like Bloomingdale’s, Nordstrom and Galerie Lafayette.

Altesse Studio’s heritage and premium positioning made it a shoo-in for luxury department stores. To make the channel turn, the brand has doubled down on store support to ensure sales associates are educated on how its products should be displayed and sold. Tissot-Gaillard noted that managing operations with department stores hasn’t been easy. 

“It’s always very complex and time-consuming, and it takes so much time to get things set up and get products in store,” she said. “It takes six to eight weeks to get products from a department store’s warehouse to their own stores. We’ve been out of stock on our hero SKUs in their bestselling stores for several weeks just because of that.”

Relying on department stores more for credibility than conversion, Altesse Studio aims to enlarge its retail network across luxury stores. At the same time, it plans to boost its direct-to-consumer business to capture better margins. 

Speaking to brand founders about the realities of marketing spend at retail, Tissot-Gaillard said,  “At the beginning, you spend more than you earn, and that’s normal, and you have to be ready for that.”